Day 3 N21 festival

The N21 Film festival has a DIY, unpretentious feel, staging its screenings
in scout halls and churches in the dark outer-reaches of north London.
Greying scout masters serve the wine, and eats take the shape of red fairy
cakes with coiffures curling an inch high. Most of the screenings are
accompanied by film-maker talks. Last night was a Future Shorts screening
with enjoyable pieces from Scotland and Korea, dealing with lost Vikings
and adulterous parents respectively. Wednesday and Thursday will show award-winning films about urban isolation and village nostalgia.

The festival is run by John Stewart, who works with Reel Islington, a filmcharity that runs monthly film clubs, and Ellie Phillips, a recent MA film grad. The festival’s general theme has to do with the problematic
transition from village to suburb and its associated losses and gains.
Arguably, arts activity is one of the casualties as once-particular
villages become indistinct suburbs and London’s magnetic force draws
resident creatives out of their original neighbourhoods leaving those
neighbourhoods all the more indistinct. N21 is nostalgic for an earlier
time, and initiatives like it might actually effect some sort of
rejuvenation of local identity in a backlash yearning for the quaint and
communal on the shores of London’s anonymous seas.

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